the advance of physiology under Johannes Mueller
(1833), and the enormous progress of palaeontology and comparative
anatomy between 1820 and 1860--provided this necessary foundation.
Darwin was the first to coordinate the ample results of these lines of
research. With no less comprehensiveness than discrimination he
consolidated them as a basis of a modified theory of descent, and
associated with them his own theory of natural selection, which we
take to be distinctive of "Darwinism" in the stricter sense. The
illuminating truth of these cumulative arguments was so great in every
branch of biology that, in spite of the most vehement opposition, the
battle was won within a single decade, and Darwin secured the general
admiration and recognition that had been denied to his forerunner,
Lamarck, up to the hour of his death (1829).

Before, however, we consider the momentous influence that Darwinism
has had in anthropology, we shall find it useful to glance at its
history in the course of the last half century, and notice the various
theories that have contributed to its advance. The first attempt to
give extensive expression to the reform of biology by Darwin's work
will be found in my _Generelle Morphologie_ (1866)[127] which was
followed by a more popular treatment of the subject in my _Natuerliche
Schoepfungsgeschichte_ (1868),[128] a compilation from the earlier
work. In the first volume of the _Generelle Morphologie_ I endeavoured
to show the great importance of evolution in settling the fundamental
questions of biological philosophy, especially in regard to
comparative anatomy. In the second volume I dealt broadly with the
principle of evolution, distinguishing ontogeny and phylogeny as its
two coordinate main branches, and associating the two in the
Biogenetic Law. The Law may be formulated thus: "Ontogeny (embryology
or the development of the individual) is a concise and compressed
recapitulation of phylogeny (the palaeontological or genealogical
series) conditioned by laws of heredity and adaptation." The
"Systematic introduction to general evolution," with which the second
volume of the _Generelle Morphologie_ opens, was the first attempt to
draw up a natural system of organisms (in harmony with the principles
of Lamarck and Darwin) in the form of a hypothetical pedigree, and was
provisionally set forth in eight genealogical tables.

In the nineteenth chapter of the _Generelle Morphologie_--a part of
which has b